CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-16 published
He used his brush as a weapon to empower the powerless
Once a sincere and ardent Communist, he spent more than 60 years
depicting strikes, refugee camps, political rallies, native reserves
and the lives of ordinary working people
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Toronto -- Bill
STAPLETON was more than just another artist with
a social conscience. His documentary art prodded, pushed, shamed,
confounded and made people think (and sometimes squirm). He knew
that not many people wanted to hang socially relevant art like
his over their living-room sofas. It was just as well.
No bucolic landscapes, postcard portraits or pictures of fruit
for him, but fulminations against inequality, oppression, poverty
and the misery of society's dispossessed. These were powerful
reminders of humanity's shortcomings, but also depictions of
the inner strength and dignity of people accustomed to hardship.
In the words of his biographer, Mr.
STAPLETON held "strong, unabashedly
partisan empathy" with the compositions the artist called "Human-scapes."
Largely unsung, though he was once dubbed "the People's Artist,"
Mr. STAPLETON was a committed socialist, activist and a sensitive,
persuasive man "who celebrated the dignity and independence of
the human spirit without irony but not without humour," wrote
C.H. (Marty) Gervais in People In Struggle: The Life and Art
of Bill Stapleton (Penumbra Press; 1992).
Working in a variety of media - pen-and-ink, charcoal, watercolour,
ink wash, oils and acrylics - Mr.
STAPLETON spent more than 60 years
depicting strikes and picket lines where workers squared off
against police and company goons, refugee camps where he heard
tales of torture, women's rallies and the lives of ordinary working
people, and native reservations where he faithfully recorded
disgusting poverty.
"Sketching is honest and immediate," he'd say. "You can't go
back and pretty it up."
His artistic activism wasn't limited to Canada. He journeyed
to Mexico and Central America to document injustice and despair
with nothing more than brushstrokes.
"People have been neglected," Mr.
STAPLETON explained on his
90th birthday, "and that's why I've concentrated on them. Social
art doesn't play enough of a role in art." He saw his role as
almost journalistic, a visual Upton Sinclair whose solidarity
with his subjects only hardened. Mr.
STAPLETON was committed
to using his craft "as a tool and weapon for the benefit of the
powerless and the denunciation of the powerful," Mr. Gervais
found.
Collections of Mr.
STAPLETON's work are housed in the National
Archives of Canada and, ironically for a man who worked so hard
toward peace, in the Canadian War Museum. In 2006, he donated
more than 1,500 canvases and sketches to the Cabbagetown/Regent
Park Community Museum in Toronto.
Born and raised in middle-class comfort in conservative small-town
Ontario, his father was a salesman. A 1933 strike at a local
food plant that was violently suppressed left a deep mark on
him. "The father of a friend of his was beaten in that strike,"
said his daughter, Lynn
TAILOR/TAYLOR. "
That left a very raw impression.
It had a lot to do with influencing his politics later in life."
He planned to become an engineer and, to that end, accepted a
job surveying the Trans-Canada Highway in White River, Ontario,
north of Lake Superior. The Depression was on and he was grateful
for the work. His older brother, Bruce, an illustrator well known
for his war-bonds and Red Cross posters, sent him some paints,
and Mr. STAPLETON sketched the scenery and his fellow workers
- 12 to a tarpaper bunkhouse. With little else to do after long,
gruelling days, he honed his talents, sending pieces to his brother,
who returned them with notations suggesting improvements.
He toiled in the north for 18 months and, with $800 in savings,
headed to New York City where he studied art at the U.S. National
Academy of Design, and where the apolitical 21-year-old first
encountered radical politics. His roommates in a teeming tenement
near Central Park were leftists, and the Big Apple was a magnet
for Marxists. Finding and sketching hobos and street urchins
a stone's throw from the gleaming towers of Wall Street helped
seal his political views.
But New York was as competitive as people had warned. After two
years, he failed to find work as an illustrator and came home.
In Toronto, he worked as a printing salesman, which allowed him
to take evening classes at the Ontario College of Art.
In 1941, Mr.
STAPLETON was emboldened to join the Communist Party
of Canada after Ottawa banned it. This was no act of petulance
but a sincere belief that the party could better achieve the
dreams of social justice than other leftist groups. (He would
quit the party in the early 1950s, dismayed by Stalin's treatment
of artists in the Soviet Union.)
Later in 1941, when the Soviet Union entered the Second World
War, he signed up for service in the Royal Canadian Air Force
and became a pilot. It was around this time he first achieved
recognition. A work of his titled Canadian Airman was included
in a travelling Canadian military exhibit.
Shipped to several bases in England, he ended up with the 418th Royal
Canadian Air Force Squadron in North Yorkshire and trained on
Wellington and Lancaster bombers. But the war ended before he
could fly any missions.
Meantime, he'd sketched.
"It got so I was annoyed if we had to fly because it cut into
my art time," he would recall to his biographer. "I usually rode
a bicycle, with a small canvas bag I could sling over my shoulder,
and I'd pedal off to sketch. Fortunately for me, when the fog
set in - and this was quite often, English weather being what
it is - we'd be grounded for two or three days. It was a great
opportunity, and not having to make art to make money was like
being subsidized."
At war's end, he chose to stay in London to study at the famed
Slade School of Art. Though his own war art portfolio grew, an
appointment as an official war artist eluded him, and he returned
to Canada in time to document two seminal strikes, one by Stelco
workers in Hamilton in 1946, and the other by the Canadian Seaman's
Union in 1949 on the waterfronts of Welland, Toronto and Montreal.
That same year, he married Margaret (Mickey)
RYLANCE.
He'd met
her at an art show, and later explained that he fell for her
despite the fact she believed in God.
With a family to support, he started his own advertising agency
and bought a cottage and a split-level house in Toronto. The
middle-class life was maybe not what communists aspired to, but
"with a wife and three daughters and a couple of mortgages, I
had to have a job - so I went into the advertising business.
It was a living." There was a line he once heard about working
in advertising and loved to quote: "I never told my mother I
was in advertising. She thought I played piano in a brothel."
In 1974, he visited Russia on a cultural exchange. Describing
it as the trip that had the greatest impact on him, Mr.
STAPLETON
reconciled conflicted feelings. "They led the world in science
and were the first to the moon. Freedom of the sexes, women were
ship captains and factory heads. Socialism led the world then,
but was betrayed from within and without. I still believe in
revolution."
He divorced his wife after 23 years of marriage - there were
no hard feelings and the two stayed Friends - and moved to Toronto's
Cabbagetown neighbourhood ("it was here I joined the human race")
where he began depicting ordinary people doing ordinary things.
For about a decade, he was resident artist at three Toronto landmarks:
The Hotel Winchester, the Paramount Tavern, and the Trojan Horse
Coffee House. He'd sit for hours, sketching and painting exiled
Chilean musicians, leftist activists, and the regulars.
"I liked pubs like the Paramount," he recalled. "It attracted
a mostly black clientele. The guys were cocky, exuberant and
graceful; they just had this way of moving and expressing themselves.
And their music - wow! The mixed clientele provided a real slice
of life - fights, shootings, stabbings and four police vans on
a Saturday night."
As for his style, it had a relaxed structure but his lines were
"direct and bold, drawn with rock-steady hand and a sharp eye,"
noted Carol
MOORE-
EDE,
Mr.STAPLETON's friend and curator. "He
painted in startlingly vibrant colours and bold strokes, as forthright
in his technique as he was in his social convictions."
One reviewer lauded his oeuvre as being in the tradition of Edgar
Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
His pace quickened in his sixties and seventies. He journeyed
to Nicaragua in 1982 to sketch the suffering and despair caused
by the country's political upheaval. In 1984, he went to Mexico
to document the scores of Guatemalan refugees flooding the border
in a struggle for safety and food. The following year, he was
part of a delegation that travelled to Spain to seek recognition
for the 1,239 Canadians of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (the
"Mac-Paps") who fought the fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
And in 1989, he joined the Innu of Sheshatshit, Labrador, to
protest low-level test flights of North Atlantic Treaty Organization
fighter jets and bombers over traditional native hunting grounds.
An exhibit was mounted in Toronto.
He belonged to Veterans Against Nuclear Arms, and in the early
1980s, helped mobilize artists in a national disarmament movement,
Arts for Peace, chaired by novelist Margaret Laurence and numbering
the likes of Pierre Berton, Norman Jewison, Margaret Atwood and
Karen Kain.
In his later years, he volunteered for ArtHeart, a community-based
effort that provides free access to studio space, instruction,
and art supplies. He'd give away quick sketches to children.
Just last December, he received the Ontario Federation of Labour's
first Lifetime Cultural Achievement Award. His age prevented
his attendance but he received a standing ovation nonetheless.
Asked by his biographer whether, at 75, he still had "the fire"
in him, Mr.
STAPLETON reflected, "Sure, I still get passionate
about causes, about inequity and inequality, about what's wrong
with our society, with the environment and with the economic
system… Look, you have to have anger, passion, indignation, love,
tenderness - the whole gamut of human emotion - if you're going
to be a real artist. Injustice is always with us, and one of
the jobs of responsible artists is to respond to it. Art becomes
an essential voice in all the chaos of our times: A tool for
bearing witness, and a weapon for effecting change."
He never made a living at art, he admitted, "but I lived through
it."
William Johnson
STAPLETON was born in Stratford, Ontario on January 24,
1916. He died in Bracebridge, Ontario on February 5, 2008. He
was 92. He is survived by daughters Lynn
TAILOR/TAYLOR,
JudithSTAPLETON
and Sharon
SHERMAN. He also leaves his former wife, Mickey, and
five grandchildren.
An exhibition of Mr.
STAPLETON's selected works, is on display
at Riverdale Farm, 201 Winchester Street, Toronto, Saturdays from
11 a.m. to 3 p.m. until March 23.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-23 published
Economist was 'great warrior of peace' and sworn enemy of Third
World debt
A consultant to three levels of Canadian government, he put out
financial fires for the United Nations and the World Bank, and
went all over 'a world that is obscenely unequal, unfair and
immoral'
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S11
Toronto -- 'Greed is good," cooed the go-for-the-jugular capitalist
Gordon Gekko in the 1987 movie Wall Street. Just three years
later, a more sobering motto was sounded by Morris
MILLER, who
was a bit better grounded in the real world: "Anxiety can be
good for you."
We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself, Mr.
MILLER wrote
in Peace Magazine in 1990, and self-deceiving illusions can be
dangerous. "When surgery is needed, Aspirin is no cure," he warned.
"We are living an illusion and must act to counter the global
malaise that now afflicts us."
Long before U2 singer Bono's crusade, Mr.
MILLER recognized that
malaise as foreign debt, which was crushing not only developing
nations' treasuries, but their hope.
That the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer was hardly
news, but Mr.
MILLER, ever the economist, cited depressing evidence.
The average income in the developing world was a little less
than $400 (U.S.) per capita, he found at one point. In the industrialized
world, it was about $24,000, a ratio of 1 to 60. Two decades
earlier, the ratio had been 1 to 30. "It has doubled in one generation!"
An even more revealing comparison was between the world's richest
fifth and the world's poorest fifth: The ratio was 1 to 140.
And one out of five people earns less than $1 per day.
He minced no words: "We have a world that is obscenely unequal,
unfair and immoral. We live in a period when poverty is not only
tolerated, but is exacerbated." Part of the rationale for the
tolerance is a sense of futility: Poverty, he said, is thought
to be too wide and deep to be seriously alleviated, let alone
eradicated.
The global condition is "deplorable and getting worse." Between
a third and half of humankind is not getting enough to eat or
clothe itself, "or live in pride, hope, or human dignity. In
fact, their conditions are worsening… Not since the conquistadors
plundered Latin America has the world experienced a [financial]
flow in the direction we see today."
It was a depressing scenario to be sure, but Mr.
MILLER believed
there was a way out. Industrialized countries had to do more
and needed to regroup in a way that the United States, Japan
and Western Europe would work together to re-establish some degree
of global financial stability. In other words, co-operation.
Put another way, he felt that the days of American economic dominance
had to end, to be replaced by a new type of international management
that takes into account the economic slippage of the U.S. and
the stronger position of its two main capitalist rivals.
As for already poor countries which must service ballooning foreign
debts, "they are cannibalizing their economy to survive at a
level that can hardly be called living. Is it any surprise that
these nations are tinderboxes, ready to explode into rioting
and civil breakdown?"
An economist and development expert who worked for three levels
of government - provincial, federal and international - Mr.
MILLER
was known by his family as a "great warrior of peace."
The son of immigrant Jewish parents, he grew up in Montreal.
His mother had come from Poland, while his father, Louis
MAZUR,
was from Ukraine. He was raised not in the storied St. Urbain
Street neighbourhood, but in more uptown Outremont, graduating
from Strathcona Academy and going on to study first political
science and then commerce at McGill University.
He then headed to the London School of Economics, where he befriended
another Outremont intellectual, Pierre Trudeau. The two bummed
around Europe one summer, and they remained Friends for the rest
of Mr. Trudeau's life.
Following completion of a master's degree in 1949, Mr.
MILLER
travelled the world, witnessing wrenching poverty and inequality.
Back in Montreal, he wrote a play, The Flame Within, that was
staged at the Canadian Drama Festival.
Following PhD studies at Harvard University, where he completed
everything but his dissertation, he began teaching economics
at McGill. One of his students was future Star Trek star William
Shatner. Family lore has it that one day, Mr. Shatner informed
his professor that he would not be making a future for himself
in finance, to which Mr.
MILLER said something like, "Maybe that's
a good thing."
Mr. MILLER teamed up with Mr. Trudeau again in the early 1950s
to attend an economic conference in Moscow, where Mr.
MILLER
was extended a very rare invitation to visit China. Can my friend
Pierre come too? he asked. No, he was informed, Mr. Trudeau was
not invited. Mr.
MILLER went anyway as part of a Western delegation
that helped Mao Zedong celebrate the anniversary of the revolution
that had brought him to power in 1949.
Only decades later did Mr.
MILLER discover why Mr. Trudeau had
been unwelcome in China. In Moscow, Mr.
MILLER had worn a tweed
jacket, and Mr. Trudeau his customary sandals and shirt. The
Chinese wanted only respectably attired Westerners.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, however, did not take kindly
to Mr. MILLER's travels in the communist world, and they pressured
McGill to relieve him of his teaching post. So in the mid-1950s,
he and his new wife headed to Regina, where he took a job as
director of research and planning at Saskatchewan's natural resources
ministry.
In Ottawa for two years, Mr.
MILLER helped guide a federal conference
called Resources for Tomorrow, which examined policies related
to economic development and the environment at two levels of
government.
After a brief stint as an economist with the United Nations in
New York, he spent four hectic but fruitful ears in Rome working
for the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations agency.
He travelled throughout Africa and Asia, developing self-aid
programs on water, food, infrastructure, health, education and
the plight of women.
Continuing with the United Nations years later, he worked for
the agency's Resources Development Group and was deputy secretary-general
of a conference in Nairobi on new and renewable energy resources.
He tangled with the Saudis and Americans on the rising cost of
propane, which millions of poor had to use to cook their food.
Where did his passion for economic justice come from? "He must
have been born with those views," offered Claire, his wife of
55 years. "The big thing for him wasn't so much the politics
as the human being involved. His attitude was that we need to
help people not exploit people, and it was very clear for him
that there were choices to be made."
In 1968, Mr.
MILLER went to Washington to work for the World
Bank, which kindled his later view that the bank and its sister
organization, the International Monetary Fund, were still operating
on the outdated rules of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, which
put the U.S. dollar at the centre of the global financial system.
To him, that made no sense, but he felt the United States couldn't
admit that its influence had waned, nor could it cede any more
of its power.
Back in Ottawa in 1975, he worked for the Treasury Board and
the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, and directed a
task force on federalism for the Privy Council.
But the World Bank again beckoned, and he returned from 1981 to
1984 as an executive director representing Canada, Ireland and
10 Caribbean countries. The experience provided fodder for his
1986 book, Coping is Not Enough, described in The Globe's Report
on Business as "a cry of frustration at the way the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank are short-changed by the United
States, which is responsible for about a fifth of their finances
but has been the biggest brake on the agencies' expansion."
Mr. MILLER warned that urgent work needed to be done to avert
a major crisis in the world economy. For one thing, since its
initial payment to the World Bank of $635-million in 1947, Washington
had contributed only $479-million more, an amount "that is less
than the misplaced or stolen weaponry the Pentagon reports each
year, or less than the cost of one destroyer." The price of oil
was also a factor in global economic instability: "Both in 1973 and
1978, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries pushed
on the accelerator," Mr.
MILLER wrote. "The United States in
1979 slammed on the brakes and the rest of the world, like unbuckled
passengers, went through the windshield."
He did not let Canada off the hook, accusing it of a sycophantic
approach when it came to Third World debt reduction: "There's
always pressure to placate the Americans," he stated. "I don't
think the Canadian government gave a damn when it supported structural
adjustment. They just wanted to support the U.S., who only wanted
to help the banks get their debts serviced."
As for asking international bankers to exercise social responsibility,
"you might as well ask cats to bark. Banks are not in the business
of providing charity."
Between 1986 and 1995, Mr.
MILLER led or took part in some 20 overseas
missions for United Nations agencies, the World Bank and the
governments of Canada, Poland and Mexico to examine fiscal and
development issues and the alleviation of poverty.
He spent the final 20 or so years of his life as a consultant
on development issues and a professor at the University of Ottawa.
He found a haven at his cottage in the Laurentians, where he
loved to fish with his grandchildren. To the best of his family's
knowledge, he never caught anything.
With current economic arrangements unsustainable, the key question
for Mr. MILLER was whether new policies to redirect capital to
help poor countries would be adopted voluntarily or whether circumstances
will force changes. Under that second option, he warned, "we
will reap the whirlwind."
Morris MILLER was born on June 15, 1924, in Montreal. He died
of cancer in Ottawa on February 17, 2008. He was 83. He leaves
his wife, Claire, his children Riel, Shereen and Leona, and eight
grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-02-27 published
Rabbi built congregation with warmth, chutzpah
For 40 years, he worked to build Toronto's second-largest Reform
synagogue and smooth relations among the faiths
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- Jordan
PEARLSON once trained as a lawyer, but he ended
up a rabbi. Asked later in life how the two positions differed,
he proffered a typically talmudic response: "I now have a client
with whom I can consistently agree."
A stalwart of Toronto's Jewish community and a bridge-builder
to members of other religions worldwide, Rabbi
PEARLSON served
for 40 years as spiritual leader of Temple Sinai, the city's
second-largest Reform synagogue, and helped grow its membership
from 14 to 1,600 families.
Internationally, he twice held talks with Pope John Paul II,
financed kilns for ceramics produced by Ethiopian Jewish women
in Addis Ababa, developed the first multifaith service for the
Queen and Prince Philip, and took part in interreligious consultations
in Mauritius, Nairobi, Athens, Rome, London, Geneva, Amsterdam,
Prague and Baltimore.
At home, he was recalled for his keen mind and compassionate
ways.
"He was brilliant and inspirational from the bimah [the raised
platform in synagogues where the Torah is read] and wise and
warm in person," noted Temple Sinai's senior rabbi, Michael
DOLGIN.
"He was able to merge [those and] draw people in. People said,
'I want to be part of a community led by this man,' and when
they met him, they felt at home."
Once described by a mourner as "the divine interventionist in
our grief, with the wicked twinkle of Groucho Marx," Mr.
PEARLSON
was studying pastoral psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital
when the dean of his seminary asked him to help out a small group
of Jews in the northern Toronto suburb of North York.
"It wasn't on the map but they knew it was there because they
had postmarks that said it was," he once told the Toronto Star.
He answered the call, moving north in 1954 while still a rabbinical
student. There were no hotels then in North York, so he had to
be billeted with individual families. Among the first locations
offered to the fledgling congregation was Asbury and West United
Church.
Temple records unearthed for a commemorative weekend honouring
Mr. PEARLSON in 1995 found the following entry in the October 4,
1954, edition of Time magazine: "One night last week, the doors
of Asbury Church were thrown open. Near the altar rested an ark
bearing the lighted tablet of the Ten Commandments. The Sabbath
candles of the Jewish service glowed near the centre of worship.
In a brief welcome to the temple members, Pastor Hunter extended
the best wishes of his congregation. Rabbi
PEARLSON responded
with thanks for the 'profoundly sensitive manner this gesture
of goodwill was made.' "
Two years later, Temple Sinai was constructed on Wilson Avenue.
"We built with a $25,000 loan from Holy Blossom Temple [Canada's
largest Reform congregation] and $425,000 of pure chutzpah,"
Mr. PEARLSON would recall. He was ordained in 1957, and within
a year, membership had zoomed to 367 families.
The congregation paid off the loan and a bank mortgage. Over
the years, to meet the pressures of growth, the temple's facilities
were enlarged and a school added. Like other Toronto synagogues
of the day, it grew with its surroundings, becoming an integral
part of a Jewish community that saw healthy growth in all its
denominations - Orthodox, Conservative and the liberal Reform
movement.
Mr. PEARLSON was born in a Boston suburb to immigrant parents.
His father, Jacob, arrived from Lithuania, served in the U.S.
artillery in the First World War and later ran a tiny tailor
shop. He was a devout Jew and one of the most influential figures
in his son's life.
"Deep inside my gut was a love I identified with my father's
love of Judaism," he once said.
It was a love leavened with respect for others. "He once told
me that he would rather I did not send his grandchildren to full-time
Jewish day schools," Mr.
PEARLSON told the Star. "He said, 'They
are going to live in the gentile world. We will see that they
get plenty of Jewish studies, but you make damn sure they know
how to live with their neighbours.' "
His mother, Frieda, was a native of Poland who came to America
as a child. Although she could speak only Polish and Yiddish
at first, she grew up in upper-crust Salem, Massachusetts., and
acquired a "perfect Boston Yankee accent she never lost," her
son remembered.
He studied engineering at Tufts University on a government program
and earned a certificate in military engineering but couldn't
find work because engineering firms weren't hiring Jews. So he
toiled in the clothing trade as a cutter's assistant while studying
electronics and math at Boston University, until rheumatic fever
sidelined him for a year. Temple records note that during his
illness, he had to be pulled around in a little red cart. But
the interval afforded him the opportunity to read, and books
of all genres poured into the household to stimulate his mind.
Because his illness kept him from being drafted, he was hired
by Associated Press to work in radio and wire photos, and was
later transferred to the agency's New York office. Unhappy with
the job, he returned to Boston and worked his way through Northeastern
University as an economics and psychology major while supporting
himself as a shoe salesman, Boston Globe copy boy and confirmation
teacher at a local synagogue. During the summers, he coached
swimming.
He went on to Northeastern's law school. "Shortly before being
called to the bar, however, he developed a distaste for the law,"
noted the 1995 program that honoured Mr.
PEARLSON's four decades
of service. "He had discovered that the man he was working for
was politically powerful and was receiving unwarranted favours
from one of the judges. Jacob
PEARLSON had instilled in his sons
a tremendous moral sense. He had taught them what was right,
and this was not their way."
So it was back to school for a divinity degree and ordination
from Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. "My father was an academic
junkie," said his daughter, Abigail
OLYAN. "He could read a book
in less than an hour and lecture on it for two."
He also reached out to Christians at a time when Jews as a rule
did not. Toronto then was "very much a British colonial outpost
where people had a particular place on the social ladder, and
there was no question that the Orange Lodges ran the city," Mr. Pearson
said. "Just about everybody knew where they stood ethnically
and religiously on that social ladder."
Yet, he persisted. "There was no open dialogue, he used to say
to me," recalled his daughter. "He never understood why there
was this harsh division in a country that was becoming so multicultural.
Dad just really felt that conversation, open interfaith dialogue,
was critical so the past could never be repeated. He felt that
you can't keeping doing the same things and expect a different
result."
Prior to his many meetings at the Vatican with Roman Catholic
officials and the two with Pope John Paul, Mr.
PEARLSON would
bone up on his Catholic theology. "That's a cutting-edge effort,"
remarked Father Damien
MacPHERSON, director of ecumenical and
interfaith affairs for Toronto's Catholic archdiocese. "Jordan
had an endeared sense of the Roman Catholic Church, and of the
Pope. He had a great appreciation for [John Paul's] initiative
and efforts in Catholic-Jewish dialogue."
Indeed, the rabbi was heartened that the former pontiff took
anti-Semitism so seriously. "He loved the experience," his daughter
related. "Every time he would go abroad, he was thankful that
the cardinals and the Pope and his people were very concerned
about anti-Semitism. He said this Pope really felt the heartache
of what had happened during the Holocaust, especially when there's
so much Holocaust denial."
He was the Canadian go-to man for several religious groups, including
the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations,
which negotiates with the Vatican; the World Council of Churches
the African Council of Churches; and the Orthodox Christian Communities
of the Eastern Rites. He was the only rabbi to give the Chancellor's
Lecture in the history of the lectureship at Queen's University's
school of theology.
At his synagogue, he pioneered non-sectarian nursery school programs
for special-needs children, and started study and prayer groups.
He was voted an honorary citizen of Metropolitan Toronto.
He was saddened, however, by the cracks that crept into Canadian
Jewry.
"There was a time when the key Orthodox leaders could sit down
with the Conservative and Reform rabbis in a single rabbinic
fellowship," he said in 1995. "That disappeared about a decade
ago. Unfortunately, the Israeli impact has bled over into a divisiveness
on that front as well."
Jordan PEARLSON was born September 2, 1924, in Somerville, Massachusetts.
He died in Toronto on February 19, 2008. He was 83. He leaves
his wife of 49 years, Geraldine (Goldstein), brothers Melvin
and Stanley; children Joshua
PEARLSON,
NessaPEARLSON and Abigail
Olyan; and two grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-03-06 published
Toronto surgeon 'changed the face of pediatric plastic surgery
forever'
Gifted doctor helped 18,000 patients, mostly children with cleft
palates and congenital deformities. He made so many volunteer
trips to China that a local hospital named him its honorary head
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- William
LINDSAY was so devoted to correcting cleft
palates that he once performed the procedure on a horse. It was
1965, the patient was a year-old thoroughbred that couldn't eat
or nurse properly, and Doctor
LINDSAY teamed up with a group of
veterinarians from Toronto's Woodbine Race Track who had experience
in putting horses under general anesthetic. By this time, Doctor
LINDSAY
had already acquired a reputation as a gifted plastic surgeon
who specialized in cleft palates and other deformities. Special
oversized instruments were created for the operation by the Hospital
for Sick Children's medical engineering department.
The disorder was repaired and the patient recovered, but she
never did race. And in an unusual but perhaps poetic turn of
events, Doctor
LINDSAY's son, Bill, went on to become a veterinarian
specializing in equine surgery (and whose sole regret was that
he never got to operate alongside his father).
Dr. LINDSAY, who headed the plastic surgery division at Toronto's
Hospital for Sick Children from 1958 to 1986 and taught the specialty
at the University of Toronto's medical school for two decades,
healed an estimated 18,000 patients, mostly children born with
cleft lips and palates and congenital deformities of the hand,
as well as accident and burn victims.
Remembered as a gentle, even-tempered and self-effacing man,
Dr. LINDSAY "changed the face of pediatric plastic surgery forever,"
wrote Ronald
ZUKER, who trained under Doctor
LINDSAY and followed
his mentor to the University of Toronto and the Hospital for
Sick Children, where he, too, performed cleft lip and palate
surgery. "His kind and amiable nature was evident in the clinic
when the children would run up to sit on his lap. He was a wonderful
and empathetic clinician who led by example."
Being detail-oriented may have been one reason he was drawn to
plastic surgery, Doctor
LINDSAY recalled in his unpublished memoirs.
"It's very fine work, done with much smaller instruments than
regular surgery, and one can see the results of one's work, as
it isn't hidden inside the body."
The eldest of five children, William
LINDSAY was born and raised
in Vancouver. His parents left the Ottawa Valley on the afternoon
of their wedding in 1919 with a one-way rail ticket to the West
Coast, where his father operated the Vancouver Tugboat Company.
By 12, his son was working part-time on the tugboats up and down
the coast. Later, he toiled as a dining-car waiter aboard Canadian
National Railway trains.
Idealism and an uncle's influence led him to medicine, and he
ranked fifth among 300 students after his first year in pre-med
at the U of T. After graduation in 1945, he served briefly in
the Royal Canadian Navy, and maintained a general practice in
Sudbury, Ontario
On his first night, he was on call and found himself wandering
through a bitterly cold and snowy streetscape searching for his
first patient. He found the address, and encountered a young
woman in labour. "I got to work," he recalled, "interrupted at
times by an aggressive chihuahua who deemed it necessary to attack
my shoelaces while I attended his mistress."
Dr. LINDSAY hitched his wagon to a rising star in 1949, when
he served as a research fellow with Wilfred
BIGELOW (obituary,
March 30, 2005), who was conducting pioneering experiments on
hypothermia as it affected heart function. Doctor
BIGELOW had long
wondered whether cooling the body could slow blood flow long
enough to access the heart.
The two physicians successfully tested that theory on a dog at
the Banting Institute. After chilling the anesthetized animal
to a body temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, they interrupted
cardiac circulation for 15 minutes with clamps and opened the
heart. It wasn't beating. With Doctor
LINDSAY watching, Doctor
BIGELOW
tapped the organ tentatively with an electrical probe. All four
chambers responded with one convulsive throb. He tapped it again.
Another beat. The organ then continued beating without blood
- a first - and then with blood. The dog was rewarmed and survived.
The episode led Doctor
BIGELOW to think of a device that could deliver
a gentle jolt of some sort without damaging the heart, and he
went on to develop the first cardiac pacemaker.
Meantime, Doctor
LINDSAY had trained in plastic surgery in Toronto,
Montreal and Dallas, and joined Sick Kids in 1953. The following
year, the hospital established its Cleft Lip and Palate Research
and Treatment Centre under his leadership. Today, it is the largest
such centre in Canada, with 3,500 patients in active treatment
and 175 new patients each year. It combines 16 disciplines.
Dr. LINDSAY was one of the first McLaughlin fellows. He attended
the first two awards dinners in 1953 and 1954 and, in an interview
with the U of T's magazine, he recalled the fellowship's benefactor,
the legendary auto magnate and philanthropist Samuel McLaughlin.
"There would be 14 or 16 men sitting at a long, rectangular table.
Mr. McLaughlin would be sitting at the middle of one side. He
wasn't very tall but he would command and direct conversation
throughout dinner magnificently." Doctor
LINDSAY noted, however,
that in order to do this, Mr. McLaughlin would have to rise to
his feet when he had something to say.
In the 1970s, Doctor
LINDSAY evaluated the likelihood of success
in the replantation of various appendages, including both physical
and emotional measures. He found that the most common replantations
- in order of frequency - were thumbs, fingers, hands, arms and
legs, although the ear, nose, lips, scalp and penis could also
be reattached.
He made the first of several trips to China in the early 1980s,
when Canada's ambassador to that country asked him to perform
cleft lip and palate surgery on children and treat burn victims
at the hospital in Lanzhou, in China's northwestern Gansu province.
By the early 1990s, the missions were being underwritten by the
Canadian International Development Agency.
"Homes were very poor and they were heated with gas heaters,"
said Doctor
LINDSAY's wife of 63 years, Peggy. "These would often
turn over and there were a lot of bad burns to both adults and
children." The Canadian doctor imparted his wisdom and skills
and, in turn, learned a great deal about Chinese medicine, particularly
herb-based salves and ointments for burn victims. He never did
find out what was in them, as the Chinese couldn't translate
their contents into English. "We never knew whether they just
didn't want to tell him or really didn't know."
The Chinese hospital was able to build a new wing and, through
the efforts of Doctor
LINDSAY and Canadian International Development
Agency, it received an anesthetic machine, a respirator, a burn
bed and an electric dermatome, a machine used to produce large
sheets of skin from a donor area. In gratitude, Doctor
LINDSAY was
named honorary head of the Gansu Provincial People's Hospital.
A great believer in research, he conducted explorations into
tendon healing, which led to a special clinical interest in congenital
and traumatic hand surgery. A group of his research fellows formed
the Chicken Tendon Club.
Nicknamed the Silver Fox for his characteristic grey hair, he
served as president of the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons
in 1964-1965 and of the American Association of Plastic Surgery
in 1970-1971. He was also active in the formation of the Bloorview-MacMillan
Treatment Centre (formerly Hugh MacMillan Treatment Centre and
originally the Ontario Crippled Children's Centre). A quadruple
heart bypass operation around 1980 slowed him down, but not much.
In 2003, he was named to the Order of Ontario.
He was happiest providing comfort and hope to thousands of children,
but a close second was his time spent at the family farm, called
Skytop, north of Hockley Valley. An eco-friendly farmer and environmentalist
before those were popular, Doctor
LINDSAY planted trees and created
ponds while raising Angus cattle. His family and many young colleagues
joined him for tree-planting weekends each spring. At his side,
his grandchildren learned farming, fishing, skiing, gardening,
horsemanship and beekeeping. He was at the farm regularly until
the month before his death.
William Kerr
LINDSAY was born in Vancouver on September 3, 1920.
He died of congestive heart failure in Toronto on February 5,
2008. He was 87. He is survived by his wife of 63 years, Peggy
(FRANCES,) children William, Barbara, Katherine and Anne, and
11 grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-03-31 published
With a wrist shot 'like a bullet,' she played hockey for 73 years
There's longevity in sport and then there was the veteran from
Bala, Ontario, who competed for most of the 116 years that Canadian
women have been playing organized hockey
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S11
It was on a frigid windswept lake in central Ontario's Muskoka
region where Mickey
WALKER's parents strapped a pair of bobskates
to her tiny feet when she was three years old. As she grew, the
girl played shinny with her father and four big brothers. She
learned to stickhandle quickly. "If I didn't," she would recall,
"I never would have had the puck."
At 12, Ms.
WALKER joined her first hockey team with her brother's
hand-me-down skates, an old stick (a new one cost 25 cents),
and magazines wrapped around her shins for protection. She was
73 when the Ontario Women's Hockey Association recognized her
as the oldest woman in Canada still playing, and 85 when she
finally stopped skating in regular Monday night scrimmages at
the arena in her native Bala, Ontario
She twice contested the Canadian women's championship in the
1930s, and pioneered the growth and development of hockey for
girls and women. "She was so dedicated to women's hockey," remarked
her friend of 25 years, Hazel
McCALLION, the irrepressible mayor
of Mississauga who's leading an effort to preserve Ms.
WALKER's
small mountain of hockey memorabilia. "She always encouraged
young girls to get involved."
Ms. WALKER so loved the clean way women played that she spoke
out against the violence in today's professional game every chance
she could. "These young women play the game the way it should
be played - without violence," she told The Muskokan newspaper
in 1994. "I hate the violence of the National Hockey League!
[Commentator] Don Cherry and the National Hockey League players
who promote and play violent hockey should pay attention to those
women.
"Great hockey players over the years, whether men or women, have
never been violent. Only the goons who can't play the game and
are out to injure the great players are violent. They should
be barred from the game."
Little got her dander up like Mr. Cherry. "All he does is promote
violence in the hockey telecasts and he makes videos out of them
and sells them," she huffed in the Muskoka Sun in 1993. (Attempts
to reach Mr. Cherry for comment were unsuccessful.)
Her disdain for violence and concern for women and children extended
beyond hockey. Over several summers in Bala, she was known for
sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words: "My name is
Mickey WALKER and I abhor mental, physical and sexual abuse against
women and children. It has to be stopped!" She was also a fierce
supporter of the death penalty.
She came into the world as Mary
WALKER, the youngest of eight
children born to Ada Berry
WALKER and Captain John
WALKER, who
worked on Imperial Oil supply boats on the Great Lakes. The clan's
Muskoka roots went back to the 1860s (Walker's Point bears the
family name). The "Mickey" moniker stuck after young Mary endlessly
sang a popular song she learned from the radio: "Mickey, pretty
Mickey."
Her athletic skills came naturally. "We were a sports-oriented
family," she recalled. "My mother was a beautiful skater and
was still skating at 65. My father was a good hockey player well
past the age of 50. So, hockey and sports just came naturally
to me."
She also excelled at baseball and curling, and canoed well into
her 80s.
Ms. WALKER began playing for the Bala girls' team in 1930. Practices
were Friday at 4 p.m., and young Mickey so looked forward to
them that she devised a way to get out of school early to get
to the arena before anyone: She'd begin talking to someone in
class until the teacher would holler, "Mary
WALKER - out!"
That worked until the principal saw her scurrying along with
her skates and stick before school was over. The next time the
teacher spied his talkative pupil, she was kept for a half-hour
after class.
"Well, that cured me," Ms.
WALKER recalled in the 1995 history
of women's hockey in Canada, Proud Past, Bright Future, by Brian
McFarlane. "I never tried my little trick to get to the arena
early ever again."
In 1934, Ms.
WALKER's cousin returned to Bala after a stint in
the semi-pro leagues in the United States, and joined the men's
team in Bracebridge, Ontario, about 50 kilometres away. When
he heard that the women's squad in nearby Bracebridge needed
players, he told them about Ms.
WALKER, who soon got an offer,
accompanied by room and board.
When a teammate noticed that the toe of one of Ms.
WALKER's skates
was worn through, with her sock sticking out, she marched Mickey
to her father's hardware store, where Ms.
WALKER was handed a
pair of $5 CCMs. They were the first new skates she'd ever
owned.
She soon developed into her playing height and weight - 5 feet
8 inches, 130 pounds - and in her first year with Bracebridge,
played for the national championship against the legendary Preston
Rivulettes. The old Bracebridge arena was packed to the rafters.
Ms. WALKER and her teammates had never played before such a large
crowd and were so nervous, "it took us most of the first period
to settle down," she told the Ice Times newspaper in 1991. The
fearsome Preston girls, who reigned as champs for 10 years, were
used to crowds and won the game 3-1 to retain their title.
Ms. WALKER and a group of Bala girls joined the team in Gravenhurst,
about 15 kilometres down the road, for the following season,
and again faced the Rivulettes for the national crown. The 1935
outdoor game was a disaster. For one thing, rain had dumped more
than two centimetres of water onto the ice surface. "Have you
ever tried to stickhandle on water?" Ms.
WALKER later pondered.
"The puck won't go anywhere."
For another, the champs had singled out Ms.
WALKER as the only
real threat on the opposing team. They identified her as the
one whose wavy hair curled with perspiration (this was before
helmets). Cries of "Get Curly!" could be heard from fans and
the Preston bench.
Soon, the Rivulettes' big Marm Schmuck came barrelling down a
wing straight at Ms.
WALKER. "
Step into her, Mickey! Step into
her!" yelled her brother, Reg, from the stands. She complied,
and both went down, but not before the Preston player's stick
smashed Ms.
WALKER across the nose and left her with two black
eyes. "It wasn't an accident," she said, years later. A scar
across the bridge of her nose was a lifelong souvenir.
As if that wasn't bad enough, an irate fan tried to swat Ms.
WALKER
with an umbrella every time she skated by. This time, her team
lost 9-1, and the wild hit cemented her distaste for violence
in hockey.
The Bracebridge and Gravenhurst teams folded and it was back
to Bala until the Second World War broke out. At age 22, Ms.
WALKER
moved to Toronto to work at a small-arms plant that made Lee-Enfield
rifles. Among 7,000 employees, she was soon picked among only
a half dozen women to work in the "tool room," where she operated
her own machine and earned the resentment of the men. "Girls
in the tool room," she later mused. "Unheard of."
Two-and-a-half years later, she married a plant engineer and
moved to Mississauga, where she played pickup games on the lake
and in backyard rinks. Her daughter, Launi
BANNISTER, a onetime
figure skater, laughs heartily when asked whether she ever joined
in. "Oh God, no! I didn't know what to do with a hockey stick!"
Her mother was always chosen first and always shamed the guys
with nimble skating and stick handling, and a deadly wrist shot
that was "like a bullet."
But the story gets a little murky here. All her family will divulge
is that Ms.
WALKER endured back-to-back abusive marriages, both
ending in divorce. She returned to Bala, alone, at 64.
She dived back into hockey, coaching a girls' team and captaining
the Young Tymers, a squad of women over 35. She also started
the Ice Girls, who met every Monday night at the arena for informal
games. "There were no hockey programs for women or girls," she
said about Bala. "So I started one. I'm trying to teach them
that hockey is fun."
That's a lesson Ann
KNIGHT learned. "She taught us how to stickhandle,
how to steal the puck and how to love the game," said Ms.
KNIGHT,
who played alongside Ms.
WALKER for a dozen years.
When Ms. WALKER turned 75, former Toronto Maple Leaf great Darryl
Sittler was among dozens of people who sent her birthday greetings.
She carried fan mail in her purse from Japan, Australia and the
Netherlands.
In gratitude to her boosterism, the Ontario Women's Hockey Association
in 1993 inaugurated the Mickey Walker Most Sportsmanlike Award.
Ms. WALKER watched the Ontario Women's Hockey Association's ranks
swell from a few thousand in 1975, the year it was founded, to
about 40,000 players on 2,300 teams today, according to Fran
RIDER, the association's executive director.
She loved the fact that women's hockey caught on globally, especially
in 1990, the year of the first Women's World Championship, and
1998, when it was first played as an Olympic event. "You don't
know how happy I am to see how far women's hockey has progressed,"
she enthused. "We've got just great players. They can do it all."
At the 1997 world championships in Kitchener, Ontario, she was
interviewed by CBS television. The clip caught the eye of
the late Charles Schultz, the creator of the Peanuts comic strip
and an avid hockey fan who had staged the Snoopy Senior Annual
WorldHockeyTournament in California every year. He sent Ms.
WALKER
an invitation to play on his team (the 75- to 80-year-olds) but
she was battling the flu and couldn't go.
But she was well enough to show up at the 2000 world championship
in Mississauga decked out in full hockey paraphernalia, and with
her face painted red and white.
Incredibly, Ms.
WALKER chain-smoked, starting at 25, and quitting
only two years ago after a bout of pneumonia.
She died four days before her namesake trophy was awarded to
four-time world champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist Jennifer
Botterill, who helped power the Mississauga Chiefs to the 2008
Esso women's national club championship in Charlottetown this
month.
Mickey WALKER was born Mary Pearl
WALKER in Bala, Ontario, on
January 18, 1918. She died there on March 11, 2008 of natural
causes. She was 90. She is survived by her daughter, Launi
BANNISTER,
son Stephen
KNIPFEL and grand_son Joseph.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-12 published
Ambassador a hard-nosed negotiator who paved the way to free
trade
A survivor of a torpedoed Royal Canadian Navy frigate during
the Second World War, he learned how to exploit differences among
trading regions and proved that Canada was capable of digging
in its heels
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Jake WARREN was part of that generation of tough Canadians who
saw action during the Second World War and went on to become
architects of this country's post-war political and economic
policies. Alongside such senior mandarins (and old Friends) as
SimonReisman,Gordon Robertson, Ed Ritchie and Saul Rae, Mr.
WARREN
represented a golden era when Canada came of age and made its
mark internationally.
A highly respected diplomat and public servant for 34 years,
Mr. WARREN was Canada's high commissioner to Britain and ambassador
to the United States. Before and after those appointments, he
was this country's top trade negotiator, a hard-nosed horse trader
who co-ordinated tariff and trade deals on a global scale, paving
the way for the 1988 Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.
"In my family, we knew him as Uncle Jake," recalled Liberal member
of Parliament and former Ontario premier Bob Rae, whose father,
Saul, served with Mr.
WARREN in post-war London. "He was somebody
I always turned to for candid and direct advice. He was never
shy about sharing his views."
Mr. WARREN had "a burning love" for Canada, eulogized his friend
Thomas D'AQUINO, a former civil servant and now head of the Canadian
Council of Chief Executives. He "took a strong interest in virtually
every issue that came to define Canada as we passed into the
new century: Our trading relationships with the world; our fiscal
health; our constitutional debates; relations between English
and French speaking people; our partnership with the United States
the integrity and accountability of our political leaders."
Like many of his era, Mr.
WARREN was fuelled by an intellectual
hunger and zest for life that followed the trauma of having his
warship blown out from under him. He joined the Royal Canadian
Navy in 1941 and by 1944, was a lieutenant and navigation officer
aboard the HMCS Valleyfield, a river-class frigate that had
been commissioned only the year before.
Just before midnight on May 6, 1944, on the return leg of an
escort mission, the Valleyfield was one of three frigates and
two corvettes steaming 50 nautical miles south of Cape Race,
Newfoundland. With the Valleyfield occupying the distant, astern
position in the convoy, the ships were making good time to Saint_John's,
when suddenly, a warning was sounded. Just as action stations
were called, the German submarine U-548 fired a torpedo that
ripped into the Valleyfield's port side. There was a tremendous
explosion and the ship broke in two.
"She went down in 90 seconds," recalled Stanley
TAPSON of Sidney,
British Columbia, who was a stoker aboard the ship. "Jake was
off duty that night but he was in the bridge cabin anyway."
The water temperature was barely above freezing. Of a crew of
168, 130 men perished. Because it happened late at night, most
were asleep or off watch in the mess. The ship was cut neatly
in half and they died trapped below decks, Mr.
TAPSON said.
Asked how he survived clad in nothing but a lifejacket and underwear,
Mr. TAPSON said, "I was 19." Mr.
WARREN, he recalled, wore a
thermal suit.
Of the crew who hit the water, only 38 survived. But for them
the nightmare was just beginning. It was some time before the
other ships in the convoy realized that the Valleyfield was missing.
Finally, HMCS Giffard, a flower-class corvette, went about
and steamed back to the survivors but could not stop. Under wartime
regulations, the Giffard had orders to first try to hunt down
the submarine.
Hours later, with all trace of the U-boat gone, the Giffard returned
to the scene. But by then some of the men had perished in the
water, either from hypothermia or from ingesting fuel oil that
had sluiced from the hull. The survivors were finally taken on
board and, once safely in port, they waited their turn to ride
an ambulance to hospital.
"Jake comes up to me and puts his hand on my shoulder and says,
'You're next, Stan,' recalled Mr.
TAPSON, his voice choking.
"That's was typical. He was no put-on. He was a man's man and
we all loved and respected him."
He was born on Happy Valley Farm, which grew tobacco in Howard
Township outside London, Ontario, the only child of Thomas and
Olive WARREN. At war's end, he returned to Queen's University
to complete a bachelor's degree in politics and economics that
he had started earlier.
Mr. WARREN and many his age were snapped up by a war-weary External
Affairs Department, which was eager for fresh talent. For a dozen
years, he held junior postings at Canadian embassies in London,
Washington and Paris, and showed such a flair for trade issues
that in 1958 he was appointed assistant deputy minister in the
department of trade and commerce.
Two years later, he was named vice-chairman of the Canadian delegation
at the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva, a posting
that lasted four years. Then it was back to the renamed industry,
trade and commerce ministry in Ottawa, this time as deputy minister.
At the age of 50, Mr.
WARREN was named high commissioner. "He
was one the youngest high commissioners ever sent," said his
daughter, Hilary
NICOLSON. "He relished it and did a phenomenal
job of promoting Canada as a young and youthful country, full
of prospects."
The three-year posting was replaced by another high-level appointment
as Canada's ambassador to the United States, overlapping with
the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. It was under
Mr. Ford's administration that Canada was invited to join the
G-6Group of Nations, making it the G-7. Mr.
WARREN was said
to have played a large role in that decision, and he also laid
plans for the later move of Canada's embassy to Pennsylvania
Avenue, just down the street from the White House.
WhenMr.Ford died in 2006, Mr.
WARREN recalled that the president
"understood us, and there didn't seem to be huge, terrible tensions
or problems. We didn't have a lumber dispute, and we didn't have
water diversion."
Another accomplishment of note on his watch was an agreement
reached between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
and the National Research Council of Canada for the development
and building of a "Space Shuttle Attached Remote Manipulator
System," or the Canadarm.
In 1977, rumours surfaced that Mr.
WARREN was being pushed out
of his job because of conflict with Ivan Head, a top adviser
to then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau, over preparations for
Mr.Trudeau's trip to Washington that February. Mr.
WARREN was
also rumoured to be on the short list for governor-general in
1979, but the job went to Edward Schreyer.
In 1977, he returned to Canada as co-ordinator of the Tokyo Round
of the Multilateral Trade Negotiations, which were aimed at revamping
the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. To the amazement
of many, Mr.
WARREN showed that Canada, a relatively small player
by international standards, was able to exact concessions from
Europe, the U.S. and Japan.
In fact, the way he put it, Canadian officials learned how to
exploit differences among the three most powerful trading regions.
Mr. WARREN said Canada had proved quite capable of digging in
its heels on import restrictions. "Not unreasonable" was a phrase
he often used to describe the concessions achieved by Canada.
While it's fair to say many Canadians would find topics such
as tariff quotas and countervailing duties less than scintillating,
Mr. WARREN truly loved the field. "He actually found the subject
fascinating," his daughter noted. "The negotiating skills required,
the subject matter. Free trade was something that he believed
strongly in. Dry maybe, but for him, the subtleties were extraordinary."
He was recalled as a wonderful wit but a rather formal man who
would arch his back at the dinner table to remind his children
to sit up straight. However, he mellowed with age, his daughter
pointed out.
On retirement in 1979, he was appointed vice-chairman of the
Bank of Montreal and made responsible for its growing international
network. Three years later, he was named to the Order of Canada.
But another major challenge awaited. A month shy of his 65th
birthday, the government of Quebec retained him as its free-trade
policy adviser during the North American Free Trade Agreement
negotiations.
The Globe and Mail called his appointment "intriguing" and an
ambiguous move by then premier Robert Bourassa, who "often sends
out double messages of this kind, using someone's reputation
to suggest that he is heading in one direction, and then moving
in a quite different direction.
"On the face of it, it looks as if Quebec went out to get a big-league
player; someone whose experience would match that of Simon Reisman,"
wrote Graham Fraser in 1986.
Mr. WARREN's presence suggested to others that Mr. Bourassa favoured
the idea of the trade talks' success. And while there were some
who said an independent Quebec's economy would be viable, Mr.
WARREN's
view was: "Viable means 'not dead.' That's not what I want for
Quebec."
He wanted the best for all of Canada. As he warned before the
House of Commons committee on the Meech Lake Accords, "If there
is a split or some arrangement that is less efficient than what
we have at the moment, I think we will lose something. Both Canada
and Quebec will lose."
Jack Hamilton
WARREN was born in Ridgetown, Ontario, on April 10,
1921. He died April 1, 2008 of natural causes in Ottawa. He was
87. He leaves his wife of 55 years Joan
(TITTERINGTON,) children
Hilary, Martin, Jennifer, and Ian, and nine grandchildren.
He is also survived by his Valleyfield shipmates, Stanley
TAPSON
(Sidney, British Columbia); Bill
EDWARDS (Vancouver); Don
GODWIN
(Hamilton, Ontario;) and Ian
TAIT/TAITE/TATE
(PortColbourne,Ontario

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-04-21 published
Leader in rehabilitative medicine pioneered the use of biofeedback
Brilliant student who went directly from high school to medical
school developed breakthroughs in artificial limbs, trained more
than 1,000 doctors and wrote or edited in excess of 60 books
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S10
Your body is not only a temple but a veritable fount of information.
It is continuously feeding you vital data on how to make the
best of what you've got. Getting stiff because you've been watching
television for hours? That's a message. Sidelined by an unexpected
head or backache? Another bulletin. Problem is, many of us are
tone-deaf to our own biological feedback.
The truncated term of biofeedback was coined in 1969 in Santa
Monica, California., and Doctor John
BASMAJIAN became among its
most enthusiastic proponents. It may have acquired a New Age
vibe, but Doctor
BASMAJIAN felt it was scientifically rock-solid,
for here was a technique of using equipment, usually electronic,
to reveal internal physiological events in the form of visual
and audible signals. Patients hooked up the contraptions could
then be taught how to manage these involuntary events by manipulating
the displayed signals.
Biofeedback has been found to be a very effective therapeutic
tool for the treatment of many stress-related disorders, including
cardio-vascular diseases. In fact, it was Doctor
BASMAJIAN's guess
that half of all problems seen by family doctors were behavioural
in origin, and that more standard but invasive treatments involving
surgery or drugs could be drastically reduced if people only
listened to their bodies.
Some back pain, for example, "is just a tension headache that
has slipped down." When muscles knot, it's "nature's way of splinting
a muscle," he told the New York Times. "When a muscle knots or
goes into spasm, it is protected by becoming immobilized and
forcing its owner to rest. Rest is how the body recovers from
injuries." A renowned anatomist and leader in the field of rehabilitative
medicine, Doctor
BASMAJIAN called himself the "putative father"
of electromyography, the study of electrical discharge from muscles,
and later, biofeedback.
"I started working on muscle in the days of polio and, afterward,
when it was licked, people asked me why I continued," he told
the Hamilton Spectator upon being named to the Order of Canada
in 1995. "I was able to discover some things which became important
later on."
Indeed, his research paved the way for developments in rehabilitative
medicine, specifically, how muscle could be trained to recover
from damage. His work also led to early breakthroughs in artificial
limbs. Along the way, he invented several medical devices and
procedures, including electrodes used to measure electrical impulses
in muscle fibre.
He probably could have become wealthy from his inventions alone,
but he didn't patent anything "because the money didn't interest
me, and it took so long to get something patented when it could
actually be in use if you just published a paper and made people
aware of it."
Recalled as a tireless and passionate man who displayed an almost
evangelical zeal for his work, Doctor
BASMAJIAN ended his career
as professor of medicine and anatomy at McMaster University and
director of Hamilton's Chedoke Rehabilitation Centre. His professional
output was matched by few: He authored or edited some 400 scientific
papers and 60 books which sold more than a million copies.
The best-known volume, Muscles Alive, was the first collection
of studies that used technology to study muscle behaviour during
voluntary activity, and was said to have sparked the imaginations
of countless students and health practitioners.
He embraced technology as few physicians of his age did. Recalled
Dr. Carlo DeLuca of Boston University, who worked with Doctor
BASMAJIAN
as a graduate student in 1968, "within minutes of our encounter
he asked me questions on how one could increase the input impedance
of amplifiers indwelling electromyographic signals. I had never
before heard such words from the mouth of a medical doctor. He
insisted that we be passionate about our work. For John, science
was a love affair."
He was born in Constantinople -- modern-day Istanbul -- to Armenian
parents who had both lost spouses in the genocide of 1915-1918,
which claimed up to 1.5 million of their countrymen. His father,
Mihran, was just 15 when Turkish militiamen opened fire on a
forced-labour battalion. The boy was unscathed and lay still
among the dead until a vicious blow to his head from a scimitar
knocked him unconscious and left a lifelong scar.
Bribery was the sole way out, and in 1922, Mihran, his wife Mary
and their year-old infant Varoujan left on a French visa that
was likely forged and cost a fortune. They landed in Marseilles
and from there went to Ellis Island, the New York entry point
for new arrivals to the United Sates. The clan discovered that
Canada had a program that admitted immigrants as farmers' indentured
servants, so in March, 1923, Mihran and Mary settled in Brantford,
Ontario, where they broke their backs on a dirt farm for a year.
Their doted-upon only child, whose name had been anglicized to
John, excelled at school, particularly in writing and literature.
He was accepted straight from high school into medical school
at the University of Toronto, where, owing to the Second World
War, the six-year program was condensed by 18 months.
In 1943, he volunteered in the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps,
ending up as a captain. All 119 members of the graduating class
of 1945, in which Doctor
BASMAJIAN placed second, were in uniform
and became the medical officers who examined and discharged thousands
of returning Canadian soldiers, sailors and airmen.
He aimed for a residency in surgery but instead was hired by
his professor, the famed John
GRANT, head of the anatomy department,
to teach gross anatomy at U of T's medical school for a year.
He went on to residencies at two Toronto hospitals but further
progress was cut short in the summer of 1948 by some ominous
health news of his own.
A routine X-ray revealed a lung wracked by pleurisy. The suspected
cause was the tuberculosis to which he'd been exposed by servicemen
he had examined. In those days, the only treatment was complete
bed rest in a sanatorium. He checked into one in Weston, Ontario,
but continued to sink. His own doctor feared the worst.
It was only after treatment with the then-experimental antibiotic
streptomycin that he bounced back. But medical authorities decided
he was too weakened to perform surgery.
"They thought it would be too strenuous for him," recalled Doctor Harold
Kalant, a former classmate of Doctor
BASMAJIAN's. "
They certainly
misjudged his ability to go into surgery because he had so much
fire in him, he easily could have done it. His dexterity was
remarkable." For one thing, he was able to draw with both hands
simultaneously, which was a great hit in the classroom, where
he would sketch diagrams with one hand and label them with the
other.
Back on the job at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto,
Dr. BASMAJIAN began working with polio patients and electromyographic
(EMG) equipment that had been developed by Canadian Army
neurologists during the war. "Even though polio was soon to become
rare because of new vaccines, I expanded my work with the EMG
and it became my scientific obsession," he wrote in his 1992
memoirs, I.O.U.
He went on to work with stroke victims, amputees and spinal-cord
patients, and never stopped experimenting in biomechanics and
kinesiology. Once, he wired the fingers of his two daughters
as they played piano to find out more about small-muscle use.
Trumpet and trombone players sought him out to improve their
embouchure - the use of facial muscles and the shaping of lips
to the mouthpiece.
Teaching, though, was his strength. He continued as an anatomy
professor at University of Toronto until 1957, moved to Queen's
University in Kingston until 1969 (where he won a slogan-writing
contest during Canada's centennial), then to Emory University
in Atlanta, where he received cross-postings in anatomy, rehabilitative
medicine and psychiatry. He and his family settled in Hamilton
in 1977.
In between were speaking tours and visiting professorships around
the world, including one in 1963 to the Soviet Union that resulted
in questioning by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and the
leadership of a slew of medical and scientific societies.
His son Haig, a surgeon in Cobourg, Ontario, believes his father
trained more than 1,000 Canadian doctors.
He was an avid believer in behavioural medicine - the "third
great clinical revolution in a century" - which he said consisted
of two parts: Biofeedback and self-regulation.
His work ethic was legendary. His family recalled that he could
read journals and check the proofs of his latest book while his
children played and the television was on. On several occasions,
he would raise his head and ask, "What are we watching?"
As for his own family's health, "we were not coddled," said his
daughter, Sally
BASMAJIAN. "My
Dad believed that positive thought
could cure almost anything. Our sick days were few and far between."
In late 1989, Doctor
BASMAJIAN spent two months in Armenia for Project
Hope after an earthquake that claimed some 50,000 lives in the
region. He estimated there were 100,000 survivors, including
many children, with severely impairing injures, about half of
whom would continue to have significant handicaps.
He had an "obsessive passion" for two things: His family and
science. "I've loved it," he once said, "and the most satisfying
part is knowing that by teaching, I have been able to pass knowledge
on and help thousands of people."
John Varoujan
BASMAJIAN was born in Constantinople (Istanbul)
on June 21, 1921 and died in Burlington, Ontario, on March 18,
2008, of natural causes. He was 86. He leaves his wife of 60 years,
Dora (Lucas), children Haig, Nancy and Sally, and four grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-05-24 published
Lowly, near-blind proofreader 'lived and breathed poetry'
Toronto poet was not above hawking his work on street corners
to help make ends meet. 'He had dreams like we all do, but making
money was not a big part of his life'
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S11
Toronto -- Eric
LAYMAN was cranky, expansively intelligent, argumentative,
affable, eccentric, possessed of an open mind that was balanced
by a solid conviction that he was right, and perennially hovering
near penury.
In other words, the perfect poet.
Few on Toronto's artistic scene fit the bill as well as Mr.
LAYMAN,
down to the beret worn at a rakish angle over flowing hair or
the squashed hat and scarf combo. Fewer still had the audacity
to stand on a street corner in Yorkville in the mid-sixties and
sell their verse to passersby.
A lover of language and science fiction (and notably of anything
to do with Star Trek), he spoke a passable Klingon, learned to
read Hebrew, and could hold forth on the links between Hungarian,
Finnish and Basque, followed by a flourish of politics or current
events. His poetry had its sensitive moments, but it was marked
mainly by a moodiness fleshed out with vivid images and spare,
accessible language. Like the beginning of this 1986 offering,
The Technician:
This hand, because decay is
slow but pitiless,
applies the oilcan to the
grudging wheel
force-feeds the flame that lamps
the midnight cities
defends from rust and wear the
sentient steel.
Mr. LAYMAN authored one full-length book of poetry, To a Stark
and Clean Place (1987), containing 39 poems, and two chapbooks,
Satires and Sunbursts (1976) and The Brightest Fire (2005). Another
chapbook, Secular Hymns, is due out later this year. He also
wrote short stories and book reviews for the science fiction-fantasy
fan club U.S.S. Hudson Bay's newsletter, The Voyageur, and penned
The Smoke Police for The Intended, a country rock band.
"He lived and breathed poetry," said his friend and fellow poet,
Julie McNEILL. "He was always thinking. He was more involved
in the creative process than anyone I knew."
But there was a living to be made, and he did it by selling real-estate
ads, writing the odd article and proofreading for the Toronto-based
weekly, The Canadian Jewish News for more than 30 years. Mr.
LAYMAN
had his physical limitations - deeply damaged smoker's lungs
and miserable eyesight, a congenital problem - but those never
got in the way. A lanky man with an erect bearing, there was
an unmistakable air of dignity and healthy self-esteem about
him. He bicycled everywhere, even in the foulest weather. Newspaper
proofs were read with his nose touching the page.
Despite the half-inch thick glasses, or maybe because of them,
few errors got past him. Canadian Jewish News staffers knew when
Mr. LAYMAN was at work. Anguished cries of "Oh, who the hell
wrote this?" often punctuated the quiet, sometimes followed by
a rhubarb with an editor.
The job, which took about three-quarters of his time, was crucial.
For too many years he had been underemployed and the job meant
"I actually have enough to eat and can afford the exorbitant
postage to mail manuscripts to publishers too backward-thinking
to accept submissions by e-mail," he once told listeners of radio
station CIUT's Sunday afternoon poetry program, Howl.
Even though he made barely earned enough to get by, "he wasn't
one to bemoan the fact that he wasn't wealthy," said his brother
Rod. "He had dreams like we all do, but making money was not
a big part of his life."
He was the eldest of five children born to a stay-at-home mother
and a career air-force pilot who had seen action during the Second
World War. He spent his early years in Western Canada and in
London, Ontario, before his family finally settled in Toronto
in 1957. The peripatetic existence, a troubled relationship with
his father and Mr.
LAYMAN's failing eyesight probably contributed
to his turning inward and assuming a scholarly bent, noted his
brother.
He was already a fixture on Toronto's coffee house scene when
he earned a B.A. in modern languages in 1967 from the University
of Toronto, where he'd belonged to a club called Radicals for
Capitalism. For a while, he sold advertising for The Globe and
Mail before landing at The Canadian Jewish News in 1974.
He returned to University of Toronto in 1977 and completed a
master's degree in comparative literature with an emphasis on
German writers, including his personal favourite, Goethe. Other
influences were author Ayn Rand, Appalachian folk ballads, philosopher
Baruch Spinoza, Beethoven and Joan of Arc.
During the seventies and eighties, he participated in workshops
held by the poetry groups Phoenix and Squid Inc., and was published
in their anthologies. His work also appeared in Seraphim Editions'
well-regarded 1999 anthology, The Edges of Time, alongside that
of Leonard Cohen.
The art itself was never easy and he knew it. Yet, at the same
time, "it's really quite simple," he explained. "I hang in there
and forge ahead, even when the odds of success make what I'm
doing seem rather stupid. Often, what seems the 'stupid' thing
to do is the most life-affirming - and that's why I do it."
That was also why he kept plying his craft "in a cold, uncaring
city jam-packed with too many other artists chasing too few dreams,"
once wrote his friend and fellow poet Lloyd Landa. "That's why
he often rides his bike long distances in all kinds of weather,
just to clear his head, eats meals at midnight, and tries to
cram in a couple of hours writing before he finally calls it
a night."
To Mr. Landa, Mr.
LAYMAN was an avatar of a "wonderfully bloody-minded
perseverance," someone who brushed aside laments about the shrinking
opportunity for Canadian artists simply by responding that the
answer is to "plug away, every day. Too many artists I've met
are paralyzed by the understandable angst created by insurmountable
roadblocks to getting themselves seen, heard or read. They tend
to agonize over obstacles instead of focusing their energies
on writing that next great play or song."
The Smoke Police ("Undercover smoke police skulk in holes and
corners") railed against what Mr.
LAYMAN felt were the Orwellian
powers of the state to regulate smoking in public places. "A
smoker has the right to smoke anywhere that permits it - with
the owner of each bar having the right to say yes or no," he
wrote in 2001. "My right to smoke in a bar is an extension of
the owner's property rights. That the government has the power
to ban smoking does not give [it] a moral override." He tried
to quit smoking himself on several occasions, finally succeeding
only after he became ill two years ago. But he continued to support
freedom of choice, reasoning that "an attack on the rights of
one person is an attack on every other person's rights."
The Star Trek thing was more than just an interest. Knowing he
couldn't legally sell stories about Captain James Kirk and the
StarshipEnterprise,Mr.LAYMAN invented his own universe, complete
with rich detail. The inhabitants were called the Hlu, and had
their unique identities, culture and language. Their gravity
was stronger than ours and their climate harsher. But they had
a strong oral tradition, passed down through stories and, of
course, poetry.
He set his poems to existing songs and wrote the odd haiku, but
was genuinely stumped when someone challenged him to write a
tanka, which consists of 31 syllables over five lines. "This
is hard!" he exclaimed, though he knew it was supposed to be.
He could be quick-tempered and excitable, a trait his brother
calls "an impatience with the world." But that mellowed as the
years went by, he added.
His love of puns was legendary, and new ones were met with "that's
not bad," or "that's awful." Only once was he stopped in his
tracks, when a colleague offered a convoluted bit about Mahatma
Gandhi, who, as the setup went, walked barefoot and had a diet
that resulted in bad breath. The result was a "super-calloused
fragile mystic hexed with halitosis." Mr.
LAYMAN stood perfectly
still for about a minute, then quietly pronounced, "I can't decide
whether that's so good, it's terrible, or so bad, it's wonderful."
He left behind a library of 600 volumes of poetry, though curiously,
nothing by Shakespeare.
In workshops, Mr.
LAYMAN tried to expand his students' understanding
of form. "Most of them don't know much beyond free verse; some
had never heard of a sonnet," he observed. "But above all, I
want them to understand that if they want to be writers, they
should write. Keep writing. Then revise. Edit. Write again, until
they have something that truly stands up."
Like this kiss goodbye, titled All I Need is Heaven:
I'll know life's joys to overflow
far sooner flames than rust.
Before I go, I'll share what
I know,
though the womb reclaim
my dust.
I'll leave a little joy behind me
this is my final wish.
This is all I need of heaven,
and no post-mortem bliss.
Lawrence Eric
LAYMAN was born in New Westminster, British Columbia,
on December 15, 1943 and died in Toronto on April 27, 2008, of
complications from emphysema. He was 64. He leaves sister, Molly,
and brothers Rod, John and Bill. A celebration of his life takes
place tomorrow at 3 p.m. at the Performing Arts Lodge, 110 the
Esplanade, Toronto.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-14 published
Canada's dean of glaciology warned of coming climate change
Geological Survey of Canada expert studied ancient ice cores
and set the stage for the current focus on global warming. In
1969, he was part of a team that reached the North Pole on foot
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Toronto -- Glaciers spoke to Roy
KOERNER the way trees and rocks
speak to a shaman. Considered the dean of glaciology in Canada
and widely known as Fritz, Doctor
KOERNER likened the giant chunks
of ice to a museum. He considered them "the proverbial canary
in the coal mine, an early warning to the rest of the world of
the consequences that climate change is bringing," wrote Ed Struzik,
last year's Atkinson Fellow, in a harrowing newspaper series
on global warming.
For hidden in the layers of ice "is a record of every atmospheric
event of the past - summer melts, acid snow, cooling trends,
volcanic activity, industrial pollutants, even bomb testings.
"The deeper down you go, the farther you go back in time," Mr. Struzik
said, describing Doctor
KOERNER's regard for the treasure trove
of data in glaciers. "The more sophisticated the technology you
use to interpret the cores, the more detailed the information
you retrieve."
Dr. KOERNER's study of layers in ice cores to reconstruct climate
history of the last 11 millennia set the stage for the current
focus on climate change. And as an old-school explorer of both
polar ice caps, he was among just a handful of adventurers to
be awarded the Polar Medal with both Arctic and Antarctic clasps.
He was perhaps best known for one of the most audacious expeditions
of all time, showing the world that the intrepid explorers of
yore still existed, by crossing the icebound Arctic Ocean on
dog sled from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Vesle Tavleoya, a small
rocky island off the north coast of Svalbard in Norway.
He and three fellow British explorers - including the renowned
Sir Wally Herbert, who died a year ago - left with four dog teams
on February 21, 1968, arrived at the North Pole on April 5 the
next year (where they celebrated with tinned beef stew), and
finished on May 30, 1969. In all, they trekked 5,800 kilometres,
aided by periodic supply drops from Canadian Forces aircraft.
They endured marauding polar bears, man-eating crevasses, five
months of total darkness, and temperatures plunging to -50, a
feat that has never been repeated. The achievement was hailed
by British prime minister Harold Wilson as a "feat of endurance
and courage which ranks with any in polar history." Prince Phillip,
the group's patron, called it "among the greatest triumphs of
human skill and endurance."
Not only did Doctor
KOERNER and his team become the first people
ever to make the Arctic traversal, they may have been the first
humans to reach the North Pole by foot (where they also conducted
the first surface survey of the ice).
"Were they really the first to reach the [North] Pole?" wondered
the Ottawa Citizen. "Probably. U.S. Navy explorer Robert Peary
had made the same claim 60 years earlier, but later examinations
of his diary and other evidence has led researchers to suspect
he was never closer to the Pole than eight kilometres and probably
much further."
A self-effacing, irreverent man with an indomitable spirit and
seemingly indestructible runner's body, Doctor
KOERNER sounded concerns
about shrinking glaciers and a warming Arctic long before the
current preoccupation with climate change.
By studying oxygen isotopes and the thickness of summer melt
layers, he and his fellow scientists demonstrated three decades
ago that while the warmest summers occurred 10,000 years ago
and the coldest only 150 years ago, the summers over the past
century have been the warmest in the past 1,000 years.
However, "he wasn't an alarmist," noted Geoff Green, founder
of Students on Ice, an award-winning organization based in Gatineau,
Quebec, that takes teenagers on learning expeditions to the Arctic
and Antarctic.
"He said, 'here's my data from 40 years and here's the trend,'
recalled Mr. Green, who accompanied Doctor
KOERNER on 10 expeditions
to both poles." He let others use that as a baseline for a lot
of the understanding of how our climate is changing. He didn't
have an agenda. He was a scientist - a giant in his field. He
was one of the greatest polar explorers of our time."
Possessed of an arid English wit, Doctor
KOERNER described himself
as a "relic" of the British Empire. The youngest of three sons
born to a housewife and a dock worker in the busy British naval
port of Portsmouth, he studied geography at the University of
Sheffield, where he graduated in 1954. He taught briefly, but
a wanderlust he developed as a young fan of exotic travel prompted
him to set sail in 1957 for Hope Bay, Antarctica, as a meteorologist
with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey, now the British
Antarctic Survey.
"It was a dog-sledding base," he would recall, "and we travelled
up and down the peninsula and, of course, you are surrounded
by glaciers, so naturally I got very interested."
He spent the next 2½ years as senior meteorologist and glaciologist
near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. For his work
there, he received the Polar Medal from the Queen.
In 1961, already known as a top glaciologist, he joined an expedition
to Devon Island in the Northwest Territories, where he spent
two years studying the ice cap. His work earned him a doctorate
from the London School of Economics, and laid the foundation
for his later research elsewhere in the Canadian Arctic.
As part of an annual Arctic ritual, Doctor
KOERNER returned to Devon
Island about a year ago, looked out over Jones Sound, which separates
Devon from Ellesmere Island, and noticed that it was ice-free.
"I began my career in glaciology on Devon," he rued to Mr. Struzik.
"I never thought I'd ever see that part of the Arctic Ocean open
so early in the year."
In 1963, he joined the geography department of Ohio State University's
Institute of Polar Studies as a research associate, where he
concentrated on glaciers, but also on analysis of snow stratigraphy,
or layering. For that work, he later received the United States
Antarctic Service Medal.
Following his epic trans-Arctic crossing, for which he received
the second clasp to his Polar Medal, Doctor
KOERNER joined the Department
of Energy, Mines and Resources in Ottawa as a research scientist
and head of the Ice Core Laboratory. According to his son Justin,
he chose to settle in Canada partly because the government had
acquired the equipment needed for deep drilling of ice cores.
With it, he could bore down 300 metres to the 100,000-year-old
bedrock under the Agassiz ice cap on Ellesmere Island. Those
results, which showed that summers were indeed getting warmer,
were in general agreement with results from similar work in Greenland,
where glaciers were melting twice as fast as previously believed.
Dr. KOERNER was also part of the department's Polar Continental
Shelf Project, which studied the mass balance of Arctic glaciers
and past climate through ice-core analysis, but also helped define
exactly where the polar continental shelf was in an effort to
establish Canada's sovereignty claims in the High Arctic.
He studied the ice caps on four islands: Devon, Meighen, Ellesmere
and Melville Island, thus spanning all the climate regions of
the Canadian Arctic. As his long-time friend and colleague David
Fisher wrote in the London Times a few days ago, "his approach
to polar science was direct, critical and focused on the essentials."
During his time in Ottawa, Doctor
KOERNER taught geography at Carleton
University. Over the course of his career, he published more
than 70 scientific papers and book chapters, mainly in the field
of glaciology. He was also active in the early stirrings of the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which, along with
Al Gore, was awarded last year's Nobel Peace Prize.
He took his work seriously but not himself. On field trips with
Students on Ice, "he was the king of irreverence," Mr. Green
recalled. "The kids absolutely adored him. He had a way of educating
and inspiring and entertaining that was quite unique. He was
the only guy I knew who could make a graph hilarious."
In 1979, Doctor
KOERNER was named head of the Geological Survey
of Canada's glaciology group, where he continued to work until
his formal retirement in 1999. Until this year, he was the Canadian
representative to the International Arctic Science Committee.
His final research interest was on reductions in acid snow due
to our declining use of sulphates, a result that he identified
as part of the global warming equation, according to Natural
Resources Canada.
But no matter how reserved he was, he could not hide his concern
over climate trends. "When you add up all of these unusual things
we've been seeing in the Arctic over the past few years," he
said last year, "you really realize just how warm things are
getting up there."
Down below, too. In his early days in Antarctica, he was honoured
for his work with the naming of his own topographical feature
- Koerner Rock, a 600-metre-high stone mountain near Hope Bay.
Over the years, the glacial ice has since melted to the extent
that there are now three Koerner Rocks.
Mr.Green wants to see a glacier named after Doctor
KOERNER in the
Canadian Arctic, and plans to keep alive a project of Doctor
KOERNER's
that Ottawa approved just recently, in which two Inuit youth
from Grise Fiord, Nunavut, Canada's most northern settlement,
will be taken on a trip to Antarctica this December to do some
ice coring.
RoyMartindale
(Fritz)
KOERNER was born in Portsmouth, England,
on July 6, 1932, and died in Ottawa on May 26, 2008, after cutting
short his last Arctic trip due to colon cancer. He was 75. His
wife, Anna (née
KOWALCZYKE) died in 1989. He leaves his children
Eva, Davina, Kristina and Justin.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-06-28 published
'Aggressive and very entrepreneurial,' she ranked among Canada's
top Chief Executive Officers
The head of Dover Industries took her company from annual revenues
of $10-million to $228-million. She thought nothing of phoning
federal finance ministers late at night to give them a piece
of her mind
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S12
Toronto -- Mona
CAMPBELL was 33 years old when her father died
and left behind some companies that milled flour and made ice-cream
cones. She'd been the major shareholder in the businesses, and
stepped into the top executive slot two years later, in 1954,
at a time when women in corporate leadership were unheard of.
Her own father, the wealthy industrialist Frederick
MORROW, "didn't
think women should be doing this sort of thing," Mrs.
CAMPBELL
recalled in a 1986 interview. "To begin with, it was sort of
a question mark, which makes you want to do that much better.
I had no formal training. I had done a lot of work for voluntary
organizations, dealing with budgets, scrounging for money. It's
really the same thing in a small way."
Either she was being coy or very humble. When she took over,
the company had annual revenues of $10-million. Last year, Burlington,
Ontario-based Dover Industries Ltd. had revenues of $228-million
and employed 475 people.
Described as "Canada's first conglomerate," with interests in
paper products, flour milling and straw manufacturing, as well
as the ice-cream-cone business, Dover Industries is today one
of the largest Canadian-owned flour-milling companies in operation.
Mrs. CAMPBELL served as the company's president, chief executive
officer and, until her death, as board chairwoman. In 1976, she
became the first woman elected to the board of Toronto-Dominion
Bank.
Her success belied a view about women in the corporate world
that today could be charitably described as quaint. In a 1980
interview with the Financial Times, Mrs.
CAMPBELL declared that
single women couldn't be depended on in business "because suddenly
romance hits and they marry and maybe their husband moves, so
they move." Married women, meantime, are inflexible and may interrupt
their careers to have children.
Besides, few women crave the power that comes with the position,
she believed. "The majority of women are not interested."
A lot of them feel they just don't need the extra hassle, she
told The Globe and Mail the year before. "They are willing to
do a great job but I don't know how many more want the added
responsibility of representing shareholders." She did not foresee
other women serving on her company's board. "One's enough."
She chafed at being called an industrialist. "This is just a
job," she said in 1968. "It's not that difficult."
Mrs. CAMPBELL travelled the world and gave away millions of dollars
to the arts, notably to the Royal Ontario Museum, where there's
a curatorship in her name, and the National Ballet School in
Toronto since its inception in 1959. "She knew every student
by name," said the National Ballet School's artistic director
and co-Chief Executive Officer, Mavis
STAINES, who added that
Mrs. CAMPBELL often took students to her sprawling Mohill Farm
in Puslinch, Ontario, for weekends spent frolicking with her
beloved dogs and horses. Ballet, Mrs.
CAMPBELL once declared,
"is the love of my life."
She was named to the Order of Canada in 1996. In 2001, the Association
of Fundraising Professionals honoured her as its outstanding
philanthropist of the Year.
She was an only child born into privilege. Her father was a financier
who founded the Essa Securities Company, sat on the boards of
15 corporations and amassed a large fortune. He started Dover
Industries in 1940 by acquiring and merging three companies -
a flour mill, a grain dealer and Robinson Cone, which made ice-cream
cones, straws and packaging materials in Hamilton.
A devout Catholic who scandalously married the daughter of a
Baptist minister, Mr.
MORROW donated a large tract of land in
Toronto's north to the Sisters of Saint_Joseph. Morrow Park opened
in 1960 and today has an infirmary, residences, a girls' school,
and a retreat where Pope John Paul stayed during his 2002 visit
to Toronto for World Youth Day.
Mrs. CAMPBELL's first marriage was in 1940 to John
BAND, a dashing
navy officer who hunted U-boats during the Second World War and
became an insurance executive and collector of Canadian art.
They cut glamorous figures in society and had three children
before going through an acrimonious divorce in 1955.
In 1960, she married Jim
BINNIE, father of Ian
BINNIE, a justice
on Canada's Supreme Court. That, too, ended in divorce. Finally,
in 1967, she married Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth
CAMPBELL, a career
army man who once authored a scathing report from the Korean
front that described the venerable Lee-Enfield.303 rifle as "almost
useless." He operated a farm near Guelph that raised cattle and
thoroughbreds, and died in 1990.
Mrs. CAMPBELL often said she liked people. Her daughter, Sarah
BAND, is more specific: "She loved men."
She loved animals, too, and their welfare was a top priority.
Mrs. CAMPBELL was a leading supporter of the Ontario Humane Society
and was awarded naming rights to an animal adoption centre in
Newmarket, Ontario - Mohill Village. She also endowed the Col.
K.L. Campbell Centre for the Study of Animal Welfare, which promotes
the welfare of animals through research and education, and the
Col. K.L. Campbell Graduate Travel Grant in Equine Studies, both
at the University of Guelph.
She was formal and had an old-world elegance, but lean, angular
features that bespoke a stern countenance. According to her friend
Brenda Nightingale, however, "she was the most generous person
you ever met." Her daughter noted Mrs.
CAMPBELL's fastidious
concern with her appearance: "Every thread on her had to be perfect."
Highly political and a staunch Conservative, she thought nothing
of phoning Michael Wilson, finance minister under Brian Mulroney,
late at night to give him a piece of her mind, Ms. Nightingale
recalled with a laugh.
In business, she was "very aggressive and very entrepreneurial,"
noted Dover Industries' current president and Chief Executive
Officer Howard
ROWLEY. "
She was very willing to reinvest money
back into the company. That's why we've been able to grow at
the rate we have."
Her board approved a plan in 1968 to erect a $2-million flour
mill in Halifax - the first modern flour mill in Nova Scotia
- but rebuffed her move to enter the flour market in Montreal.
"A new flour mill in Montreal 10 years ago would been a howling
success," she insisted at the time.
She oversaw the company's five subsidiaries: Robinson Cone, Cherry
Taylor Flour Mills, Howell Litho and Cartons, Taylor Grain Ltd.
and Dover Mills Ltd. of Halifax. A firm believer in acquisitions,
the company under her hand bought a paper-box concern in 1956
the Howell Lithographic Company in 1960; Bondware, a paper cup
and container firm in 1981; and another flour mill in 2003. The
packaging business was sold in 2005.
Dover Industries was touted as Canada's first diversified company
but was not as diverse as it appeared. The ice-cream cones came
from Cherry Taylor flour and were packed in Howell cartons. Dover
Mills ground the flour from Taylor Grain and shipped them in
packages that were lithographed in-house.
Still, it was a multi-faceted operation and "she could walk out
into the different plants, and she knew most of the people by
name," Mr.
ROWLEY said. "Truck drivers would phone her from their
trucks and talk to her about whatever was on their minds. It
could be work-related or just to say hello. And she'd take the
call."
Mrs. CAMPBELL treated the company as her inheritance. "I thought
I'd have a go at running it," she said in 1968. "My father told
me that I would be all right as long as I had a good lawyer,
a good accountant and a good banker. We've got them and we've
never looked back."
But in case anyone doubted who was in charge, she had this to
say in 1980: "When we go out to buy out a company, I'm the one
that does the deal." She died the day of her company's annual
meeting.
Mona Louise
CAMPBELL was born February 3, 1919, in Toronto. She
died May 29, 2008, of natural causes in Aiken, South Carolina,
where she had lived for several years and where her favourite
activity was a Tuesday-night needlepoint group called Stitch
and Bitch. She was 89. She leaves her children John
BAND,
SarahBAND and Vicki
McRAE, four grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2008-07-16 published
Academic became a religious triple threat
Denied the voice she sought in Catholicism, she converted, then
mentored hundreds of other women
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲ to The Globe and Mail, Page S8
Joanne McWILLIAM felt she was outside her beloved church, looking
in. Faced with the lifelong prospect of being denied the voice
and role she sought in Roman Catholicism, she found an alternate
route. She became an Anglican and a priest.
A religious pioneer and predictor of change who mentored and
encouraged hundreds of women in academia and the priesthood,
Dr. McWILLIAM tallied several milestones: She was the first woman
to earn a doctorate in theology from the University of Toronto's
Saint Michael's College; the first ordained woman to receive tenure
on the divinity faculty at U of T's Trinity College; and the
first Canadian woman elected president of the American Theological
Society.
She was recalled as a warm, self-effacing woman, but serious
about many things: teaching, her church and advancing the cause
of women, both in her field and beyond. Her son, Gonzalo
DUARTE,
recalled a T-shirt his mother bought him in 1977 bearing the
words: "Men of quality are not threatened by women for equality."
It was a message she carried and heeded throughout her life.
Dr. McWILLIAM was a kind of religious triple threat. As a trained
philosopher, theologian and priest, she had a wide knowledge
of secular thought, of Christianity (especially its early development)
and of what it takes to shepherd a congregation - all within
a liberal framework. "She understood deep traditions very thoroughly,
yet could advance new developments without fear," said Canon
Alyson BARNETT-
COWAN, a friend and colleague.
A tolerant woman, she had a healthy respect for those of other
denominations and faiths. "She didn't have a proselytizing bone
in her body," said her son, Sean
DEWART. "
She was not remotely
judgmental."
An internationally acknowledged expert on the theology of St. Augustine,
Dr. McWILLIAM's specialty was patristic studies, which focuses
on the early church fathers. She wrote or co-wrote dozens of
books, articles and book chapters on Augustine, feminist theology
and Christology, the study of Jesus's divine nature.
For 15 years, she was a single mother and pursued her academic
credentials while raising four children, who recognize today
that she was a tireless advocate for women's rights who established
herself as a major figure in a largely male domain, yet devoted
years to studying the harsh patriarchy of the early Christian
church.
Dr. McWILLIAM was raised in an ecumenical environment. She was
the only child born to an electrical engineer who'd been a sapper
during the First World War - a Catholic who had known discrimination
in Toronto - and a stay-at-home mother who converted to Catholicism
from the Presbyterian church. It was an arrangement that was
deemed controversial in its day.
Their daughter graduated in philosophy and history from the University
of Toronto in 1951, earning the Cardinal Mercier Medal in Philosophy,
and completed a master's degree in the subject in 1953.
The next year, she married Leslie
DEWART, who was born in Spain
and raised in Cuba. His medical studies were interrupted by a
strike, so in the early 1940s, at 19, he came to Canada to join
the Royal Canadian Air Force. He flew reconnaissance missions
over the North Atlantic and went on to teach philosophy at Saint Michael's
College. The couple divorced in 1972.
During the mid-1950s, Doctor
McWILLIAM held a variety of jobs. She
taught high school and lectured in philosophy at the University
of Detroit. For a brief time, she was a reporter at the Toronto
Star, covering "magistrate's court," but grew disenchanted. "She
felt she was too much the observer and not enough of a participant,"
said daughter Elizabeth
DEWART.
She returned to school and earned a second master's degree, this
one in theology, from Saint Michael's College in 1966, followed
two years later with a doctorate in theology, also from Saint Michael's.
"She was an unbelievably hard worker," said Ms.
DEWART.
Over the ensuing years, she held several teaching positions at
Saint Michael's College, the Toronto School of Theology and the
University of Toronto's religious studies department, which she
chaired for two terms.
But something was gnawing at her. She never voiced an outright
disappointment in the Catholic Church, but "she felt things needed
to change… that she didn't have a voice," said one of her former
doctoral students, Ellen
LEONARD of the Sisters of Saint_Joseph.
She found that voice in the Anglican Church of Canada, whose
synod on whether to ordain women she addressed in 1975 as a Catholic
theologian. The following year, in November, the church ordained
its first female priest.
"I remember her telling me that she was leaving the [Catholic]
church," Ms.
DEWART recalled. "It was so solemn. She didn't see
the opportunity to become a priest. That was a huge decision
for her."
Dr. McWILLIAM became a deacon in the Anglican Church in 1987,
the year she married Peter
SLATER, an Anglican priest and fellow
theologian, and was ordained a priest the next year, at the age
of 60. For one thing, she felt it was important for female students
to have a female priest on the faculty.
While continuing to teach, transferring from the Catholic Saint Michael's
College to the divinity faculty at Trinity College, Canada's
oldest Anglican theological school, she served as honorary assistant
at Toronto's Christ Church Deer Park. In 1997, she was appointed
by Michael Peers, then leader of the Anglican Church of Canada,
to a high-level review of central religious issues. The first
Primate's Theological Commission, which lasted until 2003, produced
three workbooks to assist the church on "fundamental theological
questions."
She addressed such matters as the nature of God. The Christian
tradition of labelling the members of the Trinity - the Father,
the son and the Holy Spirit - as "persons," was "on the whole
a bad decision," she wrote (noting that Augustine and many others
have said so) "because when we use it, we cannot but think of
human persons, and attribute the characteristics of human personhood
to God."
The Trinity "is a mystery and cannot be explained in any rational
way."
An optimist, she felt the global Anglican communion will weather
its spasm over homosexuality and avoid schism. She cited examples
of other threats to unity - slavery and the place of women -
that failed to split the church.
Dr. McWILLIAM taught for five years at the Episcopal Church's
General Theology Seminary in New York, the first woman to hold
a chair in dogmatic theology. Back in Canada, she contributed
to the decision in 2001 to provide joint recognition to Anglican-Lutheran
ordinations in this country.
Health conscious before it was fashionable, she ingested plain
yogurt and chicken livers for breakfast. But a regular tipple
of sherry was never turned aside. Minutes after doctors informed
her that her cancer was untreatable, she asked her daughter Leslie
to drop by for a glass, reasoning that "there's no point allowing
life to go completely to the dogs."
Still with sherry, just a few weeks before her death, she insisted
that her son Sean pour from an older bottle. When he asked why
he shouldn't open the fine new one he had just bought, she replied,
"I'm saving it!"
She died a week before the worldwide Anglican church voted to
allow women to serve as bishops.
Joanne Elizabeth
McWILLIAM was born in Toronto on December 10,
1928, and died there of cancer, nine years after the first diagnosis,
on July 1, 2008. She was 79. She leaves husband C. Peter
SLATER,
children Leslie
GIRODAY,
ElizabethDEWART, Sean
DEWART and Gonzalo
DUARTE, and 12 grandchildren.